Of course it is entirely possible to write a novel in MS Word. Hell, even Wordpad or every other editor can theoretically (and practically) be used for that. After all, for ages authors have done fine writing by hand or with typewriters. If you really want to write you make do with anything that allows you to put down one word after another.

But the fact is that novel writing in most cases doesn’t only consist of the actual writing of the story. Most of us have to do some research for certain aspects of the story. And then there is the planning of story arcs, the character sheets, the list of locations, a more or less detailed outline etc.

When I started my first novel I did all these preliminary planning stages by hand in paper notebooks and on loose pieces of paper. That worked, but it was pretty much a mess all over my desk. After a while it was hard to find a specific information in all those pages, because I didn’t really have a system to organize it all. Now some people might like the messy approach (or might be able to actually get random handwritten notes organized somehow) and find that helpful for their creativity or something. Fine for them. For me I found the whole thing slowed me down.

So I tried transcribing the whole mess into my computer. I made a few files in Word and in Excel and tried getting everything in there. That was marginally better, but it was still a bit scattered and it was annoying to have several files open at once and then have to switch away from my actual text to look things up or jot stuff down.

Then I discovered the NaNo Technology forum where people recommended their preferred writing software. That opened a whole new world to me, because the idea that there might be such a thing as a software specifically aimed at making the writing of novels easier had never even entered my mind. After my first NaNo I spent several months trying quite a few of them, with differing degrees of success.

The first one I gave a try was yWriter (back then it was still version 4, I think). I liked the idea of structuring the whole project in scenes and chapters, the ability to keep character sheets and a list of locations and all that. Unfortunately I realized pretty soon that yWriter’s structured approach didn’t really fit my working style. For all my craving of a certain kind of structure the one that yWriter offered was too rigid for me. And the clicking around in all those little windows and boxes and whatnot took up way too much time for me and kept me from the actual writing.

Next I found Liquid Story Binder. Definitely a program with a rather steep learning curve. It has so many options to do stuff that I felt completely overwhelmed. Of course, you don’t have to use everything it offers. Most people start out with using just one or two main functions and gradually expand as they become familiar with the program. Having a look at the tutorials probably would have helped a lot, too. As it was I only installed the trial version, but soon lost interest in playing around with it and never bothered with the tutorials. Still, I think if you invest some time in the beginning, LSB is a very nice software. It’s just not for me.

Next I stumbled upon Q10, a barebones, minimalistic fullscreen text editor. The charming thing about it are the old-fashioned typewriter sounds it can make while you type in your text. I know a feature like that is a very strange reason to fall in love with a software, but I did anyway. Q10 is my favorite application when I just want to get some writing done without any distractions. I don’t need format options or any other kind of feature, just the black screen, the amber text, the lovely anachronistic typewriter sounds and the words I transcribe from my head to the screen. That’s a surefire way to productivity for me. Oh, and it counts the words automatically and has a timer function so you can write in 30-minute-sessions (or whatever timespan you like). Very practical for NaNo.

WriteMonkey is a very similar application, but with a few more features. Since I never use those other features the two programs should basically be interchangeable for me. In reality, though, I slightly prefer Q10, only because I like its typewriter sounds more than WriteMonkey’s.

There were a handful of others I tried for different amounts of time, but nothing that really excited me. A lot of the programs have a few nifty features, but none seemed to have everything I wanted and most just bogged me down with unnecessary stuff that I didn’t need or want to use.

Which brings us to Scrivener. This software used to be available only for Mac. Even so I had read many praises about it from actual published authors (among them one of my favorite authors) and had long wanted to get my hands on it – but of course not enough to actually go out and buy a Mac. So when in October a first Beta version of Scrivener for Windows came out I naturally was all over it, fully expecting to be disappointed after all the hype I had read before. But funnily, the disappointment never set in. Instead, after playing around with the first beta for only a few hours I realized that my search for the perfect writing program was over. Even with the few bugs that I encountered in the first 2 or 3 beta versions I knew that Scrivener comes as close to what I want from a writing software as humanly possible. Which is why it warrants its own post.

But the purpose of this post was to make a list of the writing programs I have found in the last few years. I haven’t tried all of them (not even half of them), so apart from the ones I mentioned I can’t really say if they are all recommendable. But since most of them are free or at least offer free trials it probably won’t hurt to give them a try. For the ones that are not free I noted the price that was listed at the time of writing of this post.

This list is far from complete. Especially for the Mac and Linux crowd there are many more options available. I have included a few Mac only programs, because I kept hearing their names so I assume they are quite good. Most of the software I listed is available in Win and Mac versions, some are online editors that don’t involve any downloading or installation and should work in most browsers on any system.

Scrivener (45$)

Minimalist Editors:

Q10

WriteMonkey

Focus Writer

DarkRoom (Win only)

CreaWriter

Momentum Writer (Win only)

Complete Office Suites:

MS Word (from 140$ upwards)

Open Office

Corel WordPerfect (250$)

Kword

Lotus Symphony

Online Editors (no installation necessary):

Google Docs

LitLift.com

WordIt

My Writing Nook

Zoho Writer

Writeboard

Especially geared towards novelists:

yWriter (Win/Linux)

Liquid Story Binder (Win only, 46$)

New Novelist (50$)

Writer’s Café (40$)

PageFour (Win only, 35$)

StoryBook

StoryBox (35$)

Power Writer (100$)

RoughDraft (Win only)

Celtx

General text editors:

AbiWord

WordPad (included in every Windows version)

Papel

Jarte (Win only)

Script Writing Software:

Final Draft (249$)

Scripped

Mac Software:

CopyWrite (Mac only, 25$)

Textmate (Mac only, 45$)

OmmWriter (Mac only)

Storyist (Mac only, 59$)

StoryMill (Mac only, 50$)

WriteRoom (Mac only, 25$)

Other interesting stuff:

Evernote

Freemind

XMind

Spaaze

bubbl.us

MS OneNote (part of the MS Office Suite)

WikiPad

TiddlyWiki

Dropbox (referral link, gives you extra 250MB for free)

Timeline Maker (195$)

As I said there are tons of others available. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.

In fact it has been more than 2 weeks since I wrote those last 2 words. Of course there still is a lot of work to do before I can let people read the thing, but it was unbelievingly satisfying to get to the point of such a longish story where I could type “The End” underneath it all.

I have started quite a few stories in the last couple of years, but this is the first one that I kept at till I finished it. A big help in that was the outline I had for this one. When I started writing stories I used to think that working out the whole plot beforehand would make me lose interest in it. After all, writing a story is like telling it to yourself in a way and I thought it would be much more fun to discover it along the way instead of knowing what happens and how it ends before I even start writing it down.

Surprisingly, just the opposite seems to be true for me. Knowing where I wanted the story to go made the writing much easier, because I didn’t have to spend time trying to come up with what might happen next and I didn’t blunder around in the darkness, writing myself into a corner and getting stuck every couple of days. Having worked out the outline also had helped me get to know my characters pretty well, so when I started writing I already knew their quirks, their way of talking, and most important of all, their motivations.

Another thing that helped immensely was Scrivener. I don’t want to go as far as saying that I couldn’t have done it without it, but it made the whole experience a lot easier and more fun. The whole structure of the program just jumpstarts my creativity and makes the writing more play than work.

Now I can’t wait to get started on editing. Well, I actually already started, butI was so busy those last 2 weeks with work that I didn’t get quite as much done as I would have liked.

I already have two betareaders lined up who will hopefully give me valuable feedback, but I don’t want to impose the very rough first draft on them, so I will go over it all once and try to smooth out the worst crinkles before I let them see it. Right now the story has approximately 60.000 words, which seems a bit short to me, but I guess the editing will add a couple thousand more words anyway. I had so much fun writing dialogue for my two guys that I neglected the descriptions a bit and will have to add in quite a bit of that for clarity.
But for once I have an actual chance to maybe make the deadline for the CreateSpace coupon for the free proof copy that I won at NaNoWriMo.

Once I am done with my first editing run of this story (and hopefully have come up with a fitting title along the way) and it’s with the betareaders I will go back to Replay and start working on an outline for that one. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to start completely from scratch with that one or keep parts of it and just write some new chapters, but that depends on the outline I come up with. In any case I am now more than ever determined to get this story finished as well. I’m not thinking of publishing either of the two stories at this point, but I definitely want a professionally printed proof copy of each one on my bookshelf.

And the next thing I’ll try to learn is writing short stories. Because so far that is something I have real trouble with.

I didn’t like 2010 all that much, either. It’s not like anything horrible happened to me to make it an especially bad year. More the opposite: absolutely nothing at all happened in my life, which makes it a lost year. Not sure if that isn’t even worse. If anything bad had happened at least it would be memorable in a way.

The fact that that was completely my own fault doesn’t make it any easier to accept, because that means I am the only person who can make 2011 a better year. Yeah, thanks for the pressure.

Anyway, last night I spontaneously decided to start looking forward to 2011 and all the new exciting things it might bring. What changed my mind was the fact that I managed to convince myself to work on my NaNo novel again. I had been thinking about that ever since NaNo ended, but I always found excuses not to open it again. I started 2 new stories (that will go nowhere, because they are not supposed to) and fiddled around with some other things, but my NaNo stuff stayed firmly closed.

Last night I thought I might as well look it over once more before giving up on it forever. And the craziest thing happened: I read a couple of paragraphs, then a couple of pages and then a couple more and I realized that I still love the story. I love those characters and their bantering and bickering. And I want to know how their adventure ends. Which, of course, I only can find out by finishing the story. So I told myself to just write another 500 words, to just push on a little bit, to see if the story was still alive.

1200 words later – around 2 a.m. – I was sitting there grinning happily and thinking maybe 2011 might become a good year after all. It might turn out to be the year I finally finish my first novel.

So here’s to 2011: things might actually happen this year.

Now excuse me while I get back to my writing…

I still love him.
That’s all.

Last year’s NaNovel remains unfinished so far, but I haven’t given up on it yet. I did recently get some interesting new ideas for how to end it. Unfortunately this means I will have to do some major rewriting. Or at least reordering of scenes. But that’s not all that bad – at least I can probably use most of what I have written so far and just have to write a couple more scenes to tie it all together in a newish way. And then write an ending. Yeah, ok, maybe it is bad.

To make matters a tad more complicated I was stupid enough to propose the glorious idea of a pre-NaNo warmup mini-NaNo in the NaNo forums. And some other people cheerfully shouted “Yes, we want in on that fun!”. *headdesk* So now the unofficial mini-pre-warmup NaNo starts tomorrow. The plan is to write 30.000 words in 30 days, then have 2 weeks off to recuperate before starting the actual NaNo. Crazy, much?

The logical thing to do would be to finish my old story, especially since I hope to use this year’s NaNo winner’s coupon from lulu.com for the free proof copy of that story. But even though I am big on thinking logically, I have never been very good at actually acting logical in any way whatsoever. So I will probably start writing a completely different story tomorrow.

Did I mention that actually I really should be working instead?

For weeks now it has been raining almost daily. Which was fine at first, because it allowed me to sleep at night without marinating in my own sweat and it made my garden look like more like a jungle again instead of a desert. Unfortunately, meanwhile it’s more or less on its way to a swamp.

And while I first welcomed those big fluffy clouds after all that glaring sunshine that had hurt my eyes, seeing nothing but a whirling grey mass overhead for weeks isn’t quite as funny anymore. For all I know the sky above those clouds could have turned green in the meantime.

And it’s gotten cold enough that I already have to wear a jacket again when I’m outside. Now, I still do maintain that I like cooler weather more than unreasonable heat, but it is still supposed to be summer over here. And in summer I generally don’t like to have to lug around a jacket (much less a fucking umbrella) with me when I go out. As much as I love autumn, August is really too early for it to start.

This is all getting a bit ridiculous. I really wouldn’t mind some rain or even a little thunderstorm every day. But not all friggin day. A little sunshine in between all the rain really wouldn’t go amiss.

Ah well, but at least I have enough good books to read so I can ignore this whole outside world. I just started Stephen King’s “Under The Dome” a couple days ago and so far I love it.

And there is the little matter of this year’s NaNoWriMo that’s coming up pretty soon. For once I have started prepping early and it’s going well so far.

So screw the weather. It could be worse after all: at least I’m not living in Pakistan, so I guess I don’t really have all that much reason to complain.

I’m not a big fan of hot weather anyway, but now I’m really getting fed up with the damn heat. We don’t have air conditioning in our house, so the only thing that even marginally helps is opening all windows overnight and locking everything up again in the morning. Or, that would help if it got any cooler at night. Which it really doesn’t, so I’m marinating in my own sweat all night and can’t sleep well and then the sun comes up and everything gets only worse. Is it any wonder this friggin’ heat makes me crabby?

Yesterday it rained. For all of 10 minutes. And not like a real downpour, more like an unmotivated drizzle. Half an hour later there was no trace of it left.

My garden is wilting, my pond is falling dry, my dog is suffering and I’m starting to seriously contemplate moving to Alaska. *grmpf*

And if that wasn’t enough to aggravate me, there is this stupid Soccer World Cup going on, which is all that everybody is talking about. Unfortunately, the german team seems to play rather well, so they’re still in the running to win this bloody thing and everybody is going crazy about them. I don’t care about soccer at the best of times, but by now I really can’t stand it anymore. Everytime I see someone drive around with these ridiculous little flags on their car I want to just ram them and push them off the street. And if I have to hear that ridiculous expression “Sommermärchen” once again I’m afraid I will punch somebody in the face.

All in all I’m more than ready for this summer to be over. I wish I could just fall asleep right now and wake up in September.

Funnily, it had an endorsement from (of all people!) Stephenie Meyer on the cover, which normally would have been reason enough for me to never touch the book, if I hadn’t read so many good things about it elsewhere.

I found the story to be surprisingly fantastic. Surprisingly, because normally books that get so much praise rarely live up to that in my opinion. But this one definitely did. This is one of the rare stories where I caught myself thinking “damn, I wish I had written that!” all the time. And from a certain point on (I’d say around chapter 2 or so) I just couldn’t put it down anymore.

I already ordered the sequel on Amazon today and can’t wait for it to get delivered to my doorstep. And then starts the long wait for the third one, which is scheduled to be released in August.

The last time I was this excited about a trilogy was with Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies” trilogy (which meanwhile consists of 4 books).

Of course, many of them are just for documentation purposes. Since I developed this unhealthy obsession with gardening this year, I want to document when different flowers started showing up or started to bloom or whatever, just so I can go back next year when the wait for them to show themselves seems endless again and make sure that it’s just my general impatience that’s making me impatient.

I have been terribly impatient this year, since the bloody winter seemed just never ending. But when I compare my photos of, say, early March to the latest ones it is quite nice to see how much is already going on. It is just so much nicer to look out at green trees and colorful flowerbeds than at bare branches and naked earth.

Right now I have a thing for tulips, although most of them are already dying again. Because the weather wasn’t right to take good pictures I missed out on most of them again. Ah well, there’s always next year I guess…

Funnily enough when I go through my garden I mostly tend to notice the tiny flowers, the ones normal people either don’t see at all or classify mostly as weeds.

Some of them might be weeds, but in my garden that doesn’t automatically mean they have to go. As long as they’re pretty and don’t run over the other flowers I am more than happy to have most of them around, not least because they are usually more useful to the insects than many of the exotic plants that are grown in normal gardens.

Plus, and this is a big plus in my eyes: they tend to need not much tending and nurturing. They come and go as they please, they grow wherever they like, need no protection in winter, throw around their seeds liberally and basically just save me a lot of work and give me more time to enjoy my garden as it should be enjoyed: in a lounge chair with a Mai Tai in one hand and a book in the other.

What makes me happiest is that my favorite tree finally unfurls its beautiful leaves. That one always takes the longest to start doing anything each spring, but when it finally does I know that summer is really not that far away anymore.

I love my garden.

So I’ve got a new obsession.

No surprise there, really. From watching the first promo for this show on german tv I kinda knew I would end up liking it. And after I actually saw the first 2 episodes I knew I would have to get my hands on all the available ones in english.

I have watched them all pretty much straight through in 2 days (yes, I have no life). And now I am chomping at the bit to get to see more and pissed off that it will take until June (June!! WTF?) for the series to return to american television.

Why do I always have to stumble on a great new show when they are either on hiatus or on the verge of getting cancelled (or both)? I mean, I am all for german tv picking up current shows (like they did with Castle) and not waiting, like they used to, for years to actually show them (like they did with Firefly, which aired in Germany more than 5 years after its cancellation). In some cases I’d just like to find a show only after there are already 4 full seasons available, because then the catching up is so much more fun.

Anyway, at least I know that I can look forward to 12 new episodes of Lie To Me and I can still hold out a bit of hope that there will actually be a third season next year, even though it doesn’t look too good right now.

So, why am I so fascinated by this show?

Well, it’s actually 2 things:

Firstly, it’s a show about lying and about how to spot liars and the tagline of it might just as well be “Everybody Lies”, if that one wasn’t already taken. It’s just fascinating to watch how the team exposes all kinds of lies in other people, but at the same time some of them (namely Lightman himself) get away with the most preposterous lies, because they just know how to lie better.

It’s also interesting to know that most of the stuff they use in the show is based on actual scientific research and the character of Cal Lightman ist based on the real scientist Paul Ekman. Of course, a lot of it is dumbed down for the general audience, but it’s still close enough to the truth to be fascinating.

And speaking of fascinating, my second reason is of course Tim Roth. Since I watch a lot of movies I had obviously heard the name before, but I had never consciously noticed him in anything before, even though I do know some of the movies he was in.

From where I stand now I am absolutely flabbergasted how this guy could not pop up on my radar for so long. To say that I find him brilliant would be pretty much the understatement of the year. You know how I always rave about Hugh Laurie being one of my most adored actors ever? Well, Tim Roth is now standing right beside Hugh on that pedestal in my mind. Considering that the characters of Cal Lightman and Greg House share a lot of traits that’s probably fitting.

The upside is, now I can look forward to watch (or in some cases re-watch) dozens of movies Tim was in, which should be a treat. Maybe that will tide me over until June.

One other thing I love about Lie To Me is that Tim was allowed to keep his adorable english accent. It is so refreshing seeing a british actor on an american tv show actually walking around calling everybody “luv” and “mate”. I wish Hugh Laurie would have been allowed to do that on House as well.

But of course the show does not exclusively revolve around Cal Lightman (not that I would mind). There is also the rest of his team:

Dr. Gillian Foster, Cal’s business partner and closest friend. She has a tendency to mother other people, especially Cal, which can sometimes be a bit grating. But she’s also very much on his level, professionally, so there is a lot of mutual respect between the two of them. In season 1 she and Cal were strictly friends, because Gillian was married, but since she got divorced in season 2, the writers do seem to think about starting a relationship between them. I hope they don’t, because I liked their friendship so much more.

Ria Torres, the newbie on the team and a natural when it comes to spotting lies (whereas the rest of the team had to actually study to achieve their kind of insightfulness). She definitely has some issues and still has to learn not to constantly overstep boundaries, but her clashes with Lighhtman are always entertaining to watch.

Eli Loker, one of the younger scientists in the Lightman Group. He starts out as a compulsive truth teller in season 1, but pretty soon gets derailed by real life and ends up having to choose between getting fired or staying on as an unpaid intern. Not really sure if I like the direction they have taken him in, but I do still like the character.

Ben Reynolds, a new addition to the team at the end of season 1. He is an FBI agent and was introduced as somebody who can liaise with the law enforcment when it’s necessary. He’s also good to have around when things get dangerous, because the scientists are all not exactly well-equipped to deal with things like that (which I find hilarious).

Then there’s Emily Lightman, Cal’s teenage daughter. Surprisingly (considering I don’t really care much for children and teenies on tv) she has developed into the second really likeable and completely not-annoying teens on tv (the other one is Alexis Castle on Castle). I love the relationship she has with her father.

You really wouldn’t wanna play poker with these guys.

It’s nice to have a show where I like pretty much the whole cast. On most shows there are at least one or two characters that totally get on my nerves. But of course the main draw for me is Tim Roth.

Cal Lightman is such a delightful character to watch. He is not quite as intentionally rude as Greg House, but still has a tendency to be very direct and not care the least bit if he pisses people off. And he can lie like nobody’s business, which is a trait I always admired.

Another thing that I find adorable is probably less Cal and more Tim. Look at that promo pic:

It’s probably not the best example, but it’s the best picture I have to make my point. Notice how everyone stands or sits in a really artificial posture? Except Cal. He slouches.

The character does that a lot in the show, but I also noticed Tim doing it in interviews and such. Now, there’s nothing inherently sexy in having a bad posture. But I love the fact that he is so incredibly comfortable in his own skin and just doesn’t give a damn about what it looks like to other people. Besides, I do the exact same thing all the time – only I wouldn’t be self-confident enough to do it while I’m on camera.